I recently had an exchange with another redditor about why I believe AEW is completely failing, and it got me thinking of the parallels between ECW and AEW.

AEW came out of the gate with big international names, and several homegrown ones. They had Cody Rhodes and Chris Jericho who were known commodities within US wrestling circles. They also had the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and a few other international stars coming in from Japan.

This put AEW in a prime position to bring in young talent and groom them to be the next generation of stars, but that hasn't happened. Instead they keep signing talent well past their prime, like Sting and Edge, and the up and comers have yet to really emerge and take on a life of their own. MJF may be the only exception to this.

Compare that to ECW who, when I started watching, only had two recognizable names, Terry Funk and Shane Douglas, neither of which were the type to draw me in, but I saw the commercials with RVD, The Dudley's, New Jack, Sandman, Sabu, and my personal favorite "what about me!?!, what about Raven!?!

I tuned in to ECW to see the stars of tomorrow, and I was amazed. Young fresh talent that had a new style and a few old hands to push them along. Sadly, this would also be the demise of ECW as they didn't have a pipeline to feed in new talent once their bigger names were signed away to the two big boys of the business.

AEW has the opposite problem. I feel like AEW is where WWE stars go once they run out of options. I like Edge, but I really have no desire to see him wrestle anymore. Jericho is way past his prime, and Sting finally retired, but you could tell by the end that his heart wasn't in it. Mox is someone, well, I don't what Mox is 🙄.

My bigger point about AEW is that they are relying on pre established talent to draw a crowd, and once MJF left, there's nothing to really draw me in. The Bucks are boring; if you've seen one Omega match you've seen them all, and how many times does someone falling through real glass have to happen before either someone gets seriously injured, or it just becomes mundane? But without fresh talent beginning to rise, then AEW will fail for the opposite reasons that ECW did.